Vlad was born in Sighișoara, Transylvania in the winter of 1431 to a noble family, in a time when the Christian states of Eastern Europe, which included Hungary, Translyvania, Wallachia, Moldavia and others, contended for power with each other and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. His father was Vlad II Dracul, future Voivode of Wallachia and son of the celebrated Voivode Mircea the Elder. His mother is believed to be the second wife of Vlad Dracul, Princess Cneajna of Moldavia. He had two older half-brothers, Mircea II and Vlad IV Călugărul (Vlad the Monk), and a younger brother, Radu III the Fair. His family lived in Transylvania, but was of Wallachian descent. In later life he would divide his time between the two regions, both now part of modern Romania.

In the year of his birth Vlad's father and namesake had traveled to Nuremberg, Germany where he had been vested into the Order of the Dragon, a Crusader-style knightly organization sworn to fight the Ottoman Turks. At the age of five, young Vlad was also initiated into the Order. Thus his father became known as Vlad Dracul, "The Dragon", and in turn he was Vlad Dracula, "Son of Dracul" or "Son of the Dragon" (more loosely "Dracul Junior").

In 1436, Vlad Dracul became Voivoide of Wallachia as Vlad II (some say co-ruling with his son Mircea II). He was ousted in 1442 by rival factions in league with Hungary. But he secured Ottoman support for his return, agreeing to pay the Jizya (tax on non-Muslims) to the Sultan and also send his two legitimate sons, Vlad and Radu, to the Ottoman court, to serve as hostages of his royalty.

While Radu became a court favorite and eventually converted to Islam, Vlad was imprisoned and often whipped and beaten because of his verbal abuse towards his trainers and his stubborn behavior. These years presumably had a great influence on Vlad's character and led to Vlad's well-known hatred for the Ottoman Turks, the Janissaries, his brother Radu, and the young Ottoman prince Mehmet II (even after he became sultan). He was also envious of his father's preference for his elder half-brothers, Mircea II and Vlad Călugărul. He also distrusted the Hungarians and his own father for trading him to the Turks and betraying the Order of the Dragon's oath to fight the Ottoman Empire. Vlad was later released under probation and taken to be educated in logic, the Quran and the Turkish and Persian languages and works of literature. He would speak these languages fluently in his later years. He and his brother were also trained in warfare and riding horses.

With Ottoman support, the boys' father Vlad II Dracul took back his throne, but over the years he tried to play both sides. Eventually he and Mircea II were murdered in 1447 by rival factions in league with Hungary (again). The young Vlad was released in 1448 and became Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia for the first time, ostensibly also with Ottoman backing. But after just a few months he stepped down and went to Moldavia and then Hungary, where he allied himself with the dominant warlord John Hunyadi. With Hunyadi's support, he claimed the throne of Wallachia again in 1456. It was his second reign where he made his name as both a warrior against the Ottomans and as a bloodthirsty ruler. He fought their incursions into his lands and even took the fight to their own territories beyond the Danube River. He continued to be an ally of Hungary, now led by Hunyadi's son King Matthias Corvinus, but also sought to keep his lands independent.

After Vlad's death, his cruel deeds were reported with macabre gusto in popular pamphlets in Germany, reprinted from the 1480s until the 1560s, and to a lesser extent in Tsarist Russia. These works estimated for the number of his victims ranges from 40,000 to 100,000, comparable to the cumulative number of executions over four centuries of European witch hunts. According to the German stories the number of victims he had killed was at least 80,000. In addition to the 80,000 victims mentioned he also had whole villages and fortresses destroyed and burned to the ground. These numbers are most likely exaggerated.

Impalement was Vlad's preferred method of torture and execution. He impaled many of his own country's nobility (the boyar class) because he felt that they had destabilized Wallachia. He also impaled thousands of Turkish soldiers as psychological warfare, all in the name of protecting the Christian kingdoms from the Ottomans. Several of the woodcuts from the German pamphlets of the late 15th and early 16th centuries show Vlad feasting in a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brașov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims. It was reported that an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered a forest of impaled corpses along the Danube River. It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man noted for his own psychological warfare tactics, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Vlad's capital of Târgoviște.

But it was also in 1462 that his second reign ended, when an Ottoman army led by his own brother Radu and supported by rebellious boyars captured his castle. He escaped to Hungary but Matthias Corvinus had him imprisoned for political reasons. However, eventually he worked his way back into the king's good graces, even taking the king's sister as his second wife. In 1474 he was released, and went to live in Transylvania. Meanwhile his brother Radu, who the Ottomans had put in his place, had died. In 1476, he returned to Wallachia and became Voivode again for the third and last time.

Vlad was killed shortly into his third reign. There's debate over if Vlad was assassinated or died in battle, but his corpse was decapitated and his head impaled by the Ottomans at Constantinople as a trophy, and his body was buried unceremoniously, possibly at Comana, a monastery founded by Vlad in 1461. The Comana monastery was demolished and rebuilt from scratch in 1589. In 1515, 35 years after his death, Wallachia finally was completely defeated by the Ottomans and became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

The reputation of Vlad's cruelty was actively promoted by Matthias Corvinus, who tarnished Vladís reputation and credibility for a political reason: as an explanation for why he had not helped Vlad fight the Ottomans in 1462, for which purpose he had received money from most Catholic states in Europe. Matthias employed the charges of Southeastern Transylvania, and produced fake letters implicating him in high treason, written on 7 November 1462, which were used to justify his imprisonment.

Surprisingly, while German, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish literature and folklore all portray Dracula as a monster, he's considered a hero in Romania for his opposition to both Hungarian and Ottoman conquest, being voted among the 100 Greatest Romanians as recently as 2006 (compare Richard The Lion Heart, Napoleon Bonaparte or George Washington).

This puts doubts on the credibility of stories about the real Vlad's wanton cruelty, as the one nation with firsthand memory of him does not perpetrate this myth. However, being a medieval voivode, he likely did had a deal of cruelties to his name. It's painting them out of the ordinary for the time that is the questionable part.

He tends to get a Historical Villain Upgrade even in works that do not identify him with Stoker's Dracula or otherwise depict him as a vampire. Except in Romanian literature, where he always gets a Historical Hero Upgrade, from poetry to historical novels.

Tropes as portrayed in fiction:

Anti-Hero: About as far as a negative portrayal you're likely to see of him in Romania. Maybe with some Anti-Villain moments thrown in, but definitely nothing vampire-related.

Ax-Crazy: Allegedly, not only did he kill babies, and forced the parents to eat the corpse, but he dunked his bread in the blood of his enemies. In fairness the latter really hasn't been confirmed and is thought to be more rumors than real. Both of these were in fact referenced on Deadliest Warrior (and lampshaded as a bit too out there)

Blood Knight: Even the fairly accurate historical depictions tend to make the man very bloodthirsty.

Death Glare: Well, we can't actually offer proof, but it seems like a pretty safe bet, judging from the reactions of his contemporaries. Most depictions of him tend to make his also into a Kubrick Stare, Slasher Smile is optional but often added.

Historical Badass Upgrade: Though with him it's kind of difficult. Vlad is quite possibly the most badass of all Romanian rulers, both before and after him. And he has some serious competition, too.

Historical Hero UpgradeandHistorical Villain Upgrade: He's got it as bad as Richard The Lion Heart. He has been depicted as everything from a just, if harsh, leader of his people to a bloodthirsty brute deliberately slaughtering innocents. The truth presumably lies somewhere in between. In Romania, people would rather not mention him at all rather than say something truly bad about him. Mostly because, when it's all said and done, the one character trait (beside his almost suicidal bravery) that everyone seems to agree on is his incorruptibility. Which tends to make him stand out quite a bit against other rulers, both modern and ancient.

Folk Hero: In Romania as well as other parts of Europe for his protection of the Romanian population both south and north of the Danube.

Knight Templar: He had zero tolerance to criminals, enemies and nobles who would otherwise distablize Walachia and the Christian Kingdom, to a degree he made attempts to purge them at all cost.

The Sociopath: A pretty common assessment of him by modern depictions and/or psychological experts.

Spell My Name with an "S": He usually signed Romanian documents just as Vlad, but sometimes he signed as Drakulya. In Latin documents he rendered his name as Wladislaus Dragwlya, though his birth name was just "Vlad" instead of "Vladislav" - the names were equated in Latin but not in Romanian. Other variations of "Dracula" include Draculea and Dragolea. All of this has mostly stopped now, as if he's being fully named he's just referred to as Vlad III Dracula, Vlad III, or Vlad the Impaler (or Vlad Țepeș in Romanian).

Urban Legends: There are so many on Vlad it can get a bit crazy. Most being whether he really was a vampire, where he's buried, and if he will rise from the grave if his remains are disturbed.

Values Dissonance: While some of his methods were common for the day (such as razing villages, killing innocents during war, etc.) many alive even in his own time considered him terrifying and violent. Granted, those same people tended to be on the wrong end of his sword. This often veers into Deliberate Values Dissonance in modern depictions.

Appears in the following works (most of the Dracula characters tend to also be him, as such this will only list depictions that are actually supposed to be Vlad III, or explicitly based off of him):

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Anime and Manga

Alucard from Hellsing is Count Dracula and Vlad III. In the manga backstory, he was portrayed as a Knight Templar, fiercely loyal to God, but was disappointed when He did not descend after all his fighting. Feeling forsaken and knowing he lost it all, he became a vampire by sheer willpower, after sucking the blood of the battlefield before he was executed by the Ottoman Empire. Centuries later, he came to England to seek the woman he desired, Mina Harker, and was defeated by Abraham van Helsing and his group. After this second defeat, he became the faithful servant of Abraham's descendants for generations.

In the Gonzo anime, this connection was merely implied with hints in episode 9 and 13, but supplemental material in the Japanese booklets confirm this. Although, his backstory might be different because his characterization was modified. From steadfast Bodyguard Crush-like loyalty on Integra (and a Berserk Button on people betraying her or insulting her) with a deep respect for humanity like in the manga, he becomes more of a rebellious Poisonous Friend with his own agenda who keeps testing her (but he's still angry when she's seriously injured) and without regard for humanity as whole, exhibiting arrogance and superiority for being a vampire. The OVA is more accurate to the manga.

And both versions have him indulge in his old pastime of impaling. Skewering a bunch of corrupt police on flagpoles in the manga and OVA, and impaling the Big Bad of the Gonzo anime on a spike of solid silver.

Shaman King has Boris Tepes Dracula, a descendant of Vlad the Impaler, the original Dracula. Not actually a vampire, but his family has used shamanic powers granted by Hao to take revenge on humanity, who treated them like vampires since the time of Vlad.

Comic Books

Requiem Vampire Knight (or Requiem Chevalier Vampire in the original French) has a Dracula who's the ruler of the highest social class, the Vampires, on the world of Resurrection. Interestingly, they make lots of references to the man Dracula was based off and in this universe used to be; Dracula has something of an obsession with impaling and decorates his ship the 'Satanik' with stakes covered with the bodies of those who've suffered the punishment, and an impaling gun has the sound effect of 'Tepes!' whenever it's fired. He also has the mask of the High Priest of the Archaeologists nailed to his face, because the priest hadn't removed it as a sign of respect for the vampire king (and also because Dracula really doesn't like the Archaeologists): this pretty much echoes what Vlad allegedly did to a Turkish messenger who refused to remove his turban. He even looks like the original Vlad, down to the Badass Mustache.

In the indie comicbook Dracula vs. King Arthur, Lucifer, wanting to one-up God, sends vampirized Dracula back in time to battle King Arthur in order to destroy his kingdom.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has a prologue about Vlad Dracula fighting the Turks, his wife's suicide, and Vlad becoming a vampire because of it. His deeds of mass impalement aren't shown, but as a nod he hoists an enemy soldier up in the air with his spear. The film also introduces a key plot element of Reincarnation Romance between Dracula and Mina Harker, who becomes Vlad's wife in a past life.

Van Helsing was originally planned as a direct prequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula (with Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as Van Helsing) to set up the doctor's history with the vampire, but it never panned out.

Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, a 2000 television movie about Vlad's life. While liberties are taken, it's a straight historical story until the endwhere he dies excommunicated and rises from the grave, implied to have become a vampire.

Dracula Untold, a 2014 fantasy movie about Vlad becoming a vampire to fight the Turks.

In He Never Died, it's revealed that, as well as being the basic for the Biblical Cain, the main character was Vlad the Impaler.

Literature

In Bram Stoker's Dracula itself, Count Dracula doesn't claim to be Vlad Dracula but rather a descendant of him, though other characters eventually speculate about them being the same. Though Stoker gets some history wrong, like attributing the wrong family and social class to the Count and Vlad Dracula, he references real details like Vlad fighting his own brother.

The New Annotated Dracula isn't, strictly speaking, a totally original work (it's just that, the complete text of the novel annotated) but it does take an interesting angle towards Bram Stoker's novel and its proceedings— taking the statement in the beginning of the novel that the story related is (mostly) factual and being related by a third party and building from there. Places where character names and origins have been changed, edits made in retrospect for later editions by the persons involved to make their behaviour a little more acceptable...

Hideyuki Kikuchi, author of the original Vampire Hunter D light novels, also wrote a novel about Dracula in Japan during the Meiji Restoration.

Will Hill's Department 19 explicitly makes Vlad and Dracula the same person, revealing that Vlad survived his final battle with the Turks, albeit with mortal injuries, and made a Deal with the Devil to become the first vampire. Later, he is resurrected in the modern day and becomes the series Big Bad, portrayed more as the sadistic Blood Knight and ruthless conquering general of history than the conventional idea of Dracula.

In a light novel from Type-MOOn, Fate/Apocrypha, Vlad the Impaler is once again a Lancer class Servant. However, this incarnation is a different character than his Fate/Extra counterpart, and is actually rather upset about the whole "Dracula" thing. He's still not a vampire, as within the established rules of Nasuverse vampires, though he has a Noble Phantasm that turns him into the common depiction of Dracula.

In The Dresden Files, Dracula is said to be the son of Vlad Drakul, a monster of enormous power. Dracula is a member of the classically vampiric Black Court, but according to Ebenezer McCoy joined as an act of youthful rebellion. The book Dracula was commissioned by the White Court to Bram Stoker, to act as a manual to explain to Muggles how to kill Black Court vampires. It was very effective, and nowadays only the most badass Black Court vampires survive. Whether Dracula is among them is unknown; the book might have also been an account of Dracula's death, or might have simply used a powerful Black Court member as an example. Vlad Drakul, on the other hand, is immortal, still in Romania, and a freeholding lord under the Unseelie Accords, meaning he and his underlings are a small supernatural nation unto themselves.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a novel that has the actual Vlad Dracula as a vampire, using books printed with a signature dragon with the word "Drakulya" to entice curious historians into finding his grave and, thereby, himself so that he can make them his minions. In this version, he is essentially an eternally undead Badass Bookworm. However, he's still evil.

David Weber's Out of the Dark makes some oblique references to Dracula, with a significant part of the Alien Invasion story taking place in the woods and mountains of Transylvania, and a local resistance fighter seems to take inspiration from Vlad the Impaler by impaling alien invaders on stakes as a terror tactic. He actually is Dracula and finally gets really pissed at the end of the book, leading to a Curbstomp Battle when he takes the fight directly to the invaders.

In Lawrence Watt-Evans's short story "The Name of Fear", a Romanian vampire kills Vlad Dracula and later impersonates an undead version of him, in order to bring back the fear of vampires. It works: the peasants, who formerly easily protected themselves from vampires by usual wards, now don't dare to use something like this against the dreaded "Vlad".

Vlad: The Last Confession by C.C. Humphreys is a novel about his life and struggle against the Turks, posthumously framed through the recollections of his closest friend, his confessor, and his mistress. It's suggested his cruel deeds including impalement partly had their roots in a Freudian Excuseas he was raped by the Turks as a boy. In the end it's revealed he faked his death to take revenge on his greatest enemy.

If we were to list here all the Romanian historical novels starring Vlad, we'll be here all night, and possibly still miss a few. Most of them make an honorable effort to be realistic — though how that translates varies a lot. Some are merely finding Freudian excuses (which, frankly, he had in spades anyway), others are going out of their way to show his cruelty. A few are true gems of psychological analysis that, if properly made into movies, would probably shatter the box office.

The historical serial novel "Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade," by Christian Cameron, features a young Dracula just prior to becoming Voivode of Wallachia. He's depicted as affable and gentlemanly, and not at all sinister.

In Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape and its sequels, Dracula is very much Vlad III and even spends some word count reminiscing about his breathing days, including acknowledging both the torture he underwent in Turkish captivity and his own later atrocities.

Appeared in episode six in the first season of Da Vinci's Demons ("The Devil"). He later returns mid way through season 3 as a reoccurring character; his brother, Radu, is also featured as a villain.

Tabletop Games

Count Strahd von Zarovich (of the legendary Dungeons & Dragons adventure and subsequent game setting Ravenloft) started out as a renamed Count Dracula, drawing upon the movie portrayals more than the book. Similarities between the two persist to this day. To muddle the waters somewhat, though, the actual Count Dracula is used as a villain of the sub-setting Masque of the Red Death, where attempts are made to portray the character with Vlad III Tepes as a basis. As if to wring the most out of the concept, the accounts of Vlad III's infamy, taken to extremes, had in turn already been a large part of the basis for a non-vampiric villain of the main setting: Vlad Drakov.

Interestingly, the character of Count Strahd was first sketched out as a villain in a standalone adventure module written in the early 80's. The release of the Realms of Terror campaign boxed set was the first, though, to detail his history and motivations in depth. As the campaign setting was released in 1990 and the Bram Stoker's Dracula film in 1992, this makes the movie version of the good Count Older Than They Think.

The Warhammer Vampire Counts have two bloodlines modeled on versions of Dracula. The Necrarchs resemble the character's portrayal in Nosferatu, but for the closest match, the von Carstein vampires tend to dress exactly like Bela Lugosi, and live in huge haunted castles beyond the forest. The character of Vlad von Carstein is probably the closest match to Dracula; though he is long (permanently) dead in the main storyline, his vampiric offspring (first Konrad and now Mannfred) continue the family tradition. Interestingly, all three take on different aspects of the Dracula archetype. Vlad is an artist, philosopher, and a genuine romantic who reluctantly made his dying wife a vampire so as to not be separated from her, and is Dracula as a charming, seductive noble. Konrad is a bloodthirsty, sadistic butcher, with no sense of subtlety, art, or manipulation, but takes a fierce glee in battle, and so is Dracula as Vlad the Impaler. Mannfred, finally, is a sociopathic Magnificent Bastard (though, as the current one, he has been suffering Villain Decay and is now something of a General Failure) who indirectly caused the defeats of the first two to satisfy his own ambition, and is possibly the closest to Stoker's original portrayal of Dracula. As of this edit, all three of them are 'permanently' dead, but there may be other spawns of Vlad's out there.

Interestingly, the Iron Kingdoms setting has a Vlad Tepes Expy that isn't a Dracula: Vladimir Tzepesci, the Dark Prince of Umbrey, complete with a spell called "Impaler."

Steve Jackson's Car Wars had a car catalog that included a large American car with a spike on the front... 'Vlad the Impala'.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence serves as a spin on Dracula's Origins Episode in the Castlevania series: instead of Vlad Tepes, Dracula is the fictional Crusader Mathias Cronqvist, former friend of the Belmonts. However, this character is partially named after a real person who spread inflated tales of Vlad III's harsh rule: Matthias Corvinus. The game also never uses the name Dracula directly, and is set centuries before the real Vlad's time.

However, the earlier Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had direct allusions to Vlad III. The player character Alucard (Dracula's son) has the surname "Tepes" and in the game manual, Dracula's full name is "Dracula Vlad Tepes". There's also a bomb item called "Power of Sire" (sire being an archaic term for father) which generates an image of Vlad III, based on the portait used as the page image. Since this was never really retconned, just established later that Dracula existed before Vlad, one might suppose Mathias just... changed his name.

The even earlier Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse had an oblique reference to Vlad. The game depicts the canonical first defeat and death of Dracula. It's set in 1476, the very year Vlad died in reality.

Melty Blood has a vampire called the Night of Wallachia. No, that's not just a fancy title, he's actually a night, as in the period of time between sundown and sunrise. He was an alchemist who was obsessed with stopping the end of the world that he predicted for the distant future. However, he was mortal and didn't have enough time to figure out the solution, so he made a Deal with the Devil and turned himself into both a vampire and a recurring phenomenon (likened to a hurricane, something that just happens whenever the conditions are right) wherein he would materialize local rumors. The first place where his night occurred was Wallachia, giving him the shape and personality of Dracula, which seems to have stuck with him for future occurrences.

Interestingly, it's pretty conclusively stated that Vlad Tepes in the Nasuverse was not a vampire; rumors and legends of the vampire Dracula were just that: rumors and legends (although the Night of Wallachia appearing as a physical incarnation of those legends probably bolstered them quite a bit). A bit strange considering the heavy emphasis on vampires that Tsukihime and its spinoffs take.

In Fate/EXTRA, Dracula becomes a Lancer class Servant, based on his other name Vlad the Impaler, in which his tendency to executing his enemies by impaling them with spears became the basis of his class selection as Lancer. Incidentally, he doesn't seem to be a vampire, since there's already Night of Wallachia for the Dracula stand-in and Vlad/Dracula's classic vampire attributes don't seem to match the established Nasuverse vampire attributes. Like the Fate/Apocrypha version, he has has some vampire attributes despite not being a vampire, because Servants are shaped by their legend as well as their actual attributes in life.

Additionally, both the Apocrypha (as a Berserker) and the EXTRA versions of Vlad appear as summonable Servants in Fate/Grand Order.

Remilia Scarlet from Touhou Project is a vampire that claims to be the descendant of Vlad Tepes or the original Dracula. As every character (and fan) knows, this is an obvious lie. Ironically, if Dracula is assumed to have become a vampire at the time the real-life Vlad the Impaler died, Remilia is actually old enough to have plausibly claimed to be his daughter. Apparently she didn't realize this and went with the less impressive claim of merely being "descended" from him.

The final few areas in The Secret World are set in Romania, where a army of vampires are trying to Take Over the World. Despite having been dead for centuries, Vlad Dracul is an important character in the backstory. He was a vampire hunter, and his followers are still battling his estranged vampire wife's minions.

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